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Schematic prior knowledge modulates covert visual attention

Poster Session A - Saturday, March 7, 3:00 – 5:00 pm, Fairview/Kitsilano Ballrooms

Emiko Osborne¹ (emikoo@uvic.ca), Anna K. Lawrance¹, Tarek Amer¹, Jordana Wynn¹; ¹University of Victoria

Schemas are sets of expectations built through repeated experiences of certain environments. They help us navigate the complex world around us with remarkable ease. Research suggests that schematic prior knowledge (e.g., hand soap belongs next to the sink) plays an important role in memory and overt attention over long time scales, but less is known about how schemas can direct covert attention over very short time scales (e.g., within hundreds of milliseconds). In this study, we modified an attentional orienting paradigm, which has previously shown that object-location associations can enhance covert attention (Summerfield et al., 2006), by instead using schematic associations learned over a lifetime of experience. In an online experiment, participants (n = 50) were tasked with detecting the presence of briefly presented target objects in related scenes. While maintaining central fixation, participants were prompted with the name of a target object (e.g., soap bottle) and then shown a highly schematic everyday scene (e.g., bathroom). The target object was then superimposed on the scene for 100 ms in either a schema congruent (e.g., beside the sink) or incongruent location (e.g., on the floor) and participants responded via key press when they detected the object. As predicted, reaction times were significantly faster when objects appeared in schema congruent locations as compared to incongruent locations, suggesting that schematic prior knowledge rapidly directs covert visual attention. Broadly, these results suggest that schemas may facilitate cognition and behaviour by guiding visual attention and perception.

Topic Area: LONG-TERM MEMORY: Semantic